Pirates of the Burning Sea Preview

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Just think Ohio's Cuyahoga River, only with pirates.

By Emily Balistrieri

If you're feeling that life is lacking a bit in the yo ho department, then mark your calendars for January 22 because that's the date that has just today been announced as the arrival of Pirates of the Burning Sea. For those seafarers too avid to wait, catch the two week head-start program with a pre-order, which will be available for purchase October 23.

Ship's going down, captain is dead, what more can a good sailor do than step up and take the helm? Players choose to follow the French, British, Spanish, or Pirate flag in their quest for naval supremacy. Tactical battles on water depend less on what level you are than how cleverly you can maneuver your chosen vessel, and sword fights on land can sometimes have surprising results since even a level 15 can have a max skill -- higher levels are more about gaining breadth than depth in the trees.

Too much clashing on the sea can lead to unrest in the ports, sparking "final battles" which feature 25 on 25 faction warfare for control. When one side edges out far enough, everyone enters peace negotiations (with a historical precedent) and all possessions revert to their original owners.

Much of this has been touched on in earlier previews, but there was one other reveal besides the release date: something the team is calling "scooby-doo missions." Since Pirates is so rooted in realism and history in the Caribbean of 1720, you won't really be fighting much besides humans...for the most part, which prompted me to begin the chorus: Seamonster! Seamonster! Seamonster! The designers have other plans at the moment, though, having to do with ghosts, cults, and ancient Voodoo gods.

You'll encounter your first supernatural mission early on, and debunk it just like Shaggy and the gang used to do. Fakes and crooks! If you choose-- at your leisure; it's a totally optional story arc-- to dig a little deeper, however, strange things start to happen. You find yourself at Summers Isle (aka modern day Bermuda Triangle) and suddenly your crew is kidnapped. When you finally track them down, strange cultists have them suspended unconscious above the ground as if they're hanging by a string. Shower their leader with ghost powder to make her material so you can stab and slash until she retreats, promising to return.

You're also running errands for a possessed (and beached) ship's figurehead. The poor trapped soul wants her skull back, so you kill a zombie, equip his innards (no joke), and shamble thusly disguised as a gape-mouthed dead person towards what appears to be something interesting, as all the other dead people in the area are lurching over there. You come upon an angry Loa, who so loves to kill people that he's reanimating them for extended pleasure. If you can keep yourself from running, and hence breaking your aura of rotting death, you'll be able to sneak past the massacre and snatch that skull before anyone notices a thing.

Those were just a couple tastes. Things escalate from there, but as I mentioned-- it's totally optional. Between this intriguing new arc and the established swashbuckle of things, Pirates should have something for everyone when it launches, once again, on January 22.